“Her voice died into a broken whisper; a few large tears trembled in her mournful eyes, but they did not fall; the unwonted color faded from her face, and in another moment she was as statue-like as ever, and with the same impenetrable look, which made Lilian feel as if she never should have either the wish or the courage to address her. Her astonishment and utter horror at Aletheia’s strange remark were, however, speedily forgotten in the stronger emotion caused her by an incident which occurred immediately after.” This specimen of the author’s style will prove a better recommendation than any thing we can say in favor of the book; yet we do recommend it earnestly. It is a work of real genius. * * * * * _Up-Country Letters. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1 vol. 12mo._ This is a brilliant and thoughtful volume, giving fine views of country life in spring, summer, autumn and winter, with here and there a capital daguerreotype of character and manners. * * * * * _Anglo-American Literature and Manners. From the French of Philarète Chasles, Professor in the College of France. New York: Charles Scribner. 1 vol. 12mo._ This brilliant and vigorous volume should be read for its happy flashes of original thought, and occasional keenness of observation, rather than for its consistent truth. It swarms with errors, but the errors are so sparklingly expressed that they are valuable as epigrams when worthless as opinions. Every thing is sacrificed to point, and even the truths the volume contains are lit up in such a glare of witty impertinence, that they are truths suggested rather than truths expressed. French dogmatism is pertness, and our lively Frenchman’s pertness almost amounts to genius. But he is still a scholar and a critic, and some of the principles he announces are really deep and valuable; it is in their application that he fails. He lacks all sobriety of mind in observing character, manners and men, being chiefly solicitous to find in them pegs to hang his epigrams on, so that the object seen will not be America, Franklin, Irving or Bryant, but Philarète Chasles. And then he is so perfectly content with himself--he chuckles and chirrups so blithely over his own brilliant little self--he has such a sweet unconsciousness that the limits of his conceptions are not the limits of the human mind--that his quick, sharp, knowing, and gleeful spirit becomes, after the first shocks of opposition are over, quite delightful to the reader’s reason and risibles. He seems continually to say of himself, with little Isaac, in Sheridan’s Duenna--“roguish, perhaps, but keen, devilish keen.” We envy the students of the College of France such a Professor of Belles Lettres, who must hear himself talk as gladly as others hear him, and whose very seriousness seems got up for effect. He has a philosophy regarding the “fitness of things;” but to him this